


Heaven's Gate

by Mangerine



Category: World Trigger (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Black Trigger!Tachikawa, Grieving and marriages alike are processes, M/M, Non-canonical trion science, Speculative familiy history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22090099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangerine/pseuds/Mangerine
Summary: He had triggered off to detach his teammate, Izumi Kouhei, from a trion soldier.But the story wasn’t there, the story wasn’t in how Tachikawa found the blind spot in Jin’s side effect, and curled up as a corpse there. The story wasn’t in whether he was a hero or fool for it, nor was it about whose fault it was, or how to catch tornadoes in a jar, preventing disasters like this from ever happening again.Tachikawa Kei is dead.And Jin is in love. In that order; four years too late.
Relationships: Tachikawa Kei/Jin Yuuichi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. Meeting the Parents

“What do you mean we can’t see the body? He’s my son!”

Uniform of brilliant red, face rocky grey – Arashiyama stands and lets the woman try to shake him by his arms. His team is lined up like toy soldiers behind him, silent and steady.

It’s cold today. The weather forecast said the cold spell will maintain. Jin concurs with no guesswork.

“We cannot disclose any further Ma’am, investigations are still undergoing. You have our sincerest-“

“Arashiyama, thank you, that’s enough.”

Shinoda’s voice cuts through the tension. He’s collected, full of nerve. He always is. It’s another day of professionalism, whether or not he just watched his student die last night.

Shinoda approaches her, eyes betraying nothing. There is a flash in the woman’s eyes at his steady movement.

She is a short, plump woman, with her silvery curls pulled back in an easy bun. Behind her glasses, her apron, her black eyes - wooden warm, no gleam or shine - her large, worn hands, all her domesticity of middle-agedness and married life, all her maternal roundness - something is quickening like a shot deer.

“Shinoda-kun,” she whispers, approaching him, terror in her eyes.

“Where’s Kei?”

Arashiyama backs away without turning away and his movement pushes his team in kind. The younger ones leave – Kitora steps away at an artificially slow rhythm, forcing herself not to run from the scene. Satori and Mitsuru plod side-by-side. Only Satori looks back, where Arashiyama nods reassuringly to him.

He turns his steel face and cold green eyes to Jin. Sometimes warm summer grass suddenly cools like slick algae floating in the cold winter sea. Sometimes Arashiyama cannot smile either. He pauses where Jin stands, aside from Shinoda and the tragedy unfolding a foot away.

“Take care,” he says, handing Jin the Border flag with two hands, black and heavy, a smooth cloth that would unfold over a coffin without creasing.

And then they leave, the whole group of red autumn leaves quavering in wind, leaving Jin behind.

When Jin turns, the storm is over. She’s not screaming, not angry, just covering her face and sobbing. From this distance where Jin cannot hear her, she is only playing peek-a-boo with her infant son; he is gurgling behind her shielded eyes. He is waiting for her at the door because he forgot his keys. He is out in the neighbourhood with the talisman she bought him from the temple tucked in his wallet.

The old wooden door creaks open wider, and all turn to face it. A disjointed low voice says,

“You all best come in,”

xo

Tachikawa Tsukasa is shorter than his dead son, with a slight limp in his left foot. His voice is low, phlegmatic, and he never bothers to raise it even to a conversational volume, the room simply quietens and strains to hear what he’s said. A figure of command, greying hair but thick, expressing brows.

A fatigued, handsome man - his eyes are alive and too familiar for comfort.

Jin is an orphan and has long forgotten what a family pyramid of power had felt like. Yet in this small room he is reminded of how small children feel, across the table from stern-faced parents.

“Drink, Shinoda-kun. Warm up. There’s no rush, you came all the way here.” Mitsuha says, all traces of emotion vacuumed up in the fifteen minutes she spent boiling water for tea and preparing snacks.

Shinoda makes no move.

“Take your time, Masafumi,” Tsukasa says, fiddling with the unresponsive remote for the old electric fan. The sun is setting but the room still a stifling warmth like black coffee. Jin feels at home already. It is an uncomfortable hug.

Shinoda stays silent, looking at his own hands. Tsukasa sighs, almost impatient at the man’s mourning. He snaps his eyes to Jin instead. 

“Your name was Jin, wasn’t it?” He says, in his muted way. The fan is an irritating whir, a wet draft brings a fragrant waft of steamed sweet potatoes from the next-door. Tachikawa Mitsuha’s attention is in the sweet potato kitchen far from the sad little table, eyes distant in her thoughts of what dinner should be tonight. Jin sees in their future a heavy bowl of ramen.

“Yes, sir.” Jin replies. In his future the old once-father sleeps soundly.

“I know you.” Tsukasa says, staring and remembering. He turns to ignore Jin, his actions so deliberate and opaque - Jin’s never liked the feeling of not knowing, or blindfolds, or the dark, or being kept in the dark. As an afterthought, Tsukasa asks Shinoda,

“So what happened?”

in a tone that couldn’t suggest more boredom, and Shinoda takes a deep, slow breath before pulling out the official report.

Mitsuha slips her calves from under the table and makes a beeline to the fridge.

They know him.

How much has Tachikawa-san told his parents?

xo

Like a conspiracy, Jin is whisked off with the flag under Mizuho-san’s request, leaving Shinoda’s even, sad, voice behind. She leads him to a room in the back, unadorned with photographs, but the room is unmistakably Tachikawa’s. Everything is packed away and covered with dust sheets.

Mizuho walked into the room with purpose, where some strange sad magic was cast, and her stature shrinks. She morphs into a sad, lost creature.

“You’re his friend, aren’t you?” she asks from deep in the dark room.

Jin turns to reach for the light switch, but finds that it was already on. It flickered belatedly, struggling with age to light up.

“I am,” Jin replies. Light floods the room.

So she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know like Tachikawa-san never knew. Even in the light he is safe.

She unfolds the Border flag over the bed and smooths it out. Once. Twice.

“Will you help me pick out something to cremate him in?”

xo

The report in its ugly serif font was brutally short and to-the-point. The person writing didn’t want to write it; the person reading it didn’t want to read it. Tachikawa Tsukasa, the person listening, didn’t seem to care either way.

Tachikawa Kei had been fatally slashed across the back in his flesh body. He had triggered off to detach his teammate, Izumi Kouhei, from a trion soldier.

It goes on to say that the trion soldier was a new-type – never seen, new to the dimension, maybe a prototype – word fluff, their old literature teacher would scoff. Words to pad the impact, as if it mattered if Tachikawa-san was killed by an upgraded monstrosity or a humble little marmod.

The story wasn’t there, wasn’t in how Tachikawa found the blind spot in Jin’s side effect and curled up as a corpse there. The story wasn’t in whether he was a hero or fool for it, nor was it about whose fault it was, or how to catch tornadoes in a jar, preventing disasters like this from ever happening again.

Tachikawa Kei is dead.

Shinoda’s voice is even and blurry through the halls. Mitsuha goes about taking out albums, wiping them down with a rag - the front and back covers, the page edges, the spine. Methodically, she would clean the neglect off them, not straining to hear at all the details of her son's death.

She’d said, “I forgot we gave away his clothes the last time he came home. He’d outgrown most of them. We donated them,”

And then she’d turned and continued with the albums in silence. She cleans the albums without opening them to reminisce. She is in the present of reality.

Jin is not so; he is far, far away.

Jin is in the future, where the bowl of ramen is heavy in his hand.

Jin is caught in the light drizzle of last night, a thousand rain threads embroidering puddle cloths. The moon is a thin crescent, triumphant through the clouds. It disappears; it reappears. The world was moving, the clouds are rolling waves at a thousand knots. It is cold, Jin sees his breath. Tachikawa-san,

Tachikawa-san is still.

And that is what death is. It is stillness, nothing like the rabbit heart Jin is, following Mitsuha down the old hallway, heavy albums in his hands.

Downstairs, the men needed no prompting to start their talk of old days. The report is by Tsukasa, back in the manila envelope.

Shinoda-san is calling Tachikawa Tsukasa ‘ _senpai’_ from their college days in Kendo club. That was when neighbours had not descended and Tsukasa did not limp. When Tachikawa and Jin were together in not-yet existence.

“He was always a crybaby,” Mitsuha says quietly by her husband, cracking open the album, then flipping through the pages so quickly her emotions never settled long enough to hurt.

She laughs suddenly, leaning nearer to her husband, “here’s one where he’s smiling, this was from Sports Day, in grade three, I think,”

Jin wants to open his mouth and ask more, of what Tachikawa-san was, a crybaby, a terrible student, a son.

That's when he catches himself, of how the room is a boiling pot and himself the frog.

The parents circle Shinoda and himself like sharks - Tsukasa talks away the shock with nostalgia, and already Shinoda can manage a small smile. Mitsuha has seated Jin on a plush cushion, pushed an album to him.

A vice grip, himself and Shinoda in it. There would be no mention of their son unless they had a say in it. Tonight Tachikawa Kei existed in bright memories and photographs, and is blotted out of the pain of the battlefield.

“He only ever was in school for the sports events,” Shinoda sighed. “I’m surprised he even chose University,”

“If his brainless kendo teacher got into a management position, of course he’d figure he could too,” Tsukasa said.

“If you didn’t tell him how all doctors and lawyers were soulless, money-grabbing trolls with failing marriages-”

“I never said _all_ \- only my parents and their parents and also my siblings-”

“Wonderful things to tell a child, of course,”

“He asked why I took his mother’s name and I told him.”

“Senpai,”

“-and good that he listened, he got to have a childhood at least, remember he came home crying because there was a boy who- Mitsuha, do you remember-”

Mitsuha looks at her husband, just looks, and Tsukasa startles.

Again, that deliberate ignoring, that jarring focus onto his cup of tea.

He clears his throat.

“Better a soldier than a lawyer.”

Jin wouldn’t agree if he was paying attention. He’s staring at a photo where a young Tsukasa and Mitsuha are holding their toddler son. Between them he is smiling, letting them hold him safely up from the ground. Jin is a child, and from where he is knee-high, Tachikawa-san’s ankles are far from reach.

The adults continue talking, the parent and the teacher both. The conversation dangles over Jin’s head.

They know something he doesn’t.


	2. The Reception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> him across the room, welcoming guests,
> 
> dressed in black, all sharp angles -
> 
> it's like you don't even recognize the man you love.

The last time R&D was this crowded, they were having a buffet spread to celebrate the successful upgrade of the rank war booth system. It’d taken them a year and half of toiling over code and trion experimentation, but finally, the new expansion would allow more agents to train in over a thousand simulated environments seamlessly.

The previous _previous_ time it was this crowded, Mogami-san had just passed away, and agents were lined up to test if the black trigger was compatible.

Barely noon, and the day had already drained him. Konami had put up a fuss that took all of Tamakoma-1 to soothe. Her one black dress had outgrown her since the last funeral and it was a skimpy length on her thigh now. She didn’t want to go anyway, and so what if Tachikawa-san’s black trigger could be compatible with her, she wouldn’t want it even if it was. She had her axe, they all had a trigger. It wouldn’t be right. So on. So forth.

Rindo was up all night helping Netsuki explain how their top attacker died to the media. Karasuma was taming his hair into an acceptable comb. Reiji was struggling to find a necktie long enough to encircle his muscular neck. Tamakoma-2 sat numbly on the sofa, all neatly dressed, bless Osamu’s motherhenning. Hyuse had Yotaro on his lap and Raijinmaru asleep on his toes.

Jin had padded out the room in his old worn socks and Rindo’s old suit, loose around the shoulders on him. By then, Usami had Konami fitted in a dress that was navy blue and too mature, and was now working gingerly to twist her long hair into a bun with a video tutorial on her phone. Konami took a long, dour look at Jin, and Jin looked at the scratches on the old hardwood floor.

“We’re late,” Rindo said, patting his day-old suit down as he swung his office door open, and herded all of Tamakoma into a miserable heap, driving silently to HQ.

xo

They arrived late to a half empty room, with the seats labelled for B-rank agents nearly bare. They let themselves in, watching Ninomiya stand aside at the podium with Inukai as Tsuji gingerly stood with a heart-sized black cube on his open palm.

“Trigger on,” he called.

Nothing.

He released the cube, settling it back into its velvet box, took one unsteady step back, and then another, lining up his ankles and bowing deeply. Ninomiya leads his squad out the room with a curt

“Please excuse us.”

The door shuts with a breathy squeak, and Sawamura-san consults her clipboard briefly before addressing the room.

“Are there any more B-rank squads present before we move on?”

Osamu shifts in his seat, swallowing once roughly and standing.

“Tamakoma-2, present.”

“Step forward.” Shinoda-san orders, and Osamu huddles the group over. The rest of Management is in attendance, and Kinuta frowns when Hyuse trails after the group, clearly disinterested.

“We’re allowing neighbours to get their hands on the black trigger?” he complains in a badly concealed whisper. Yuma and Hyuse wait nonchalantly as a wave of chatter rustles through the room.

“Step forward,” Shinoda repeats, not making eye contact with Kinuta. The two neighbours comply obediently.

“Trigger On,” Yuma orders.

Nothing. Yuma hands the black cube to Hyuse.

“Trigger On,” Hyuse mutters.

Again,

nothing.

Osamu receives the cube with both hands. Yuma and Hyuse return to flank the waiting Chika.

“Trigger On.” Osamu calls.

The door sighs as it closes behind the departing Tamakoma-2. A silence passes over the room, as Shinoda shuffles papers needlessly, collecting his thoughts.

“Miwa squad, step forward.”

The room lurches with the weight of the team’s movement. Miwa steps up, face grim like a funeral as always. He tries. Yoneya tries. They bow. They turn to leave.

“Miwa-kun,” Jin hears.

Tsukimi Ren. Miwa’s operator and Tachikawa’s childhood friend. She’s snagged him by the cloth of his elbow, leaning to converse quietly with him. Miwa looks at Commander Kido hesitantly in askance and is given one nod in reply.

The room watches as she approaches it and touches it once, with just her pointer. Gliding her finger along one edge, like checking for dust, like she could still chide him for being messy, for not combing his hair, and have him protest that he already did – she whispers into the corner of the black cube.

She stops suddenly, swipes her finger back along the smooth surface. The teardrop she just wiped away is replaced with another uncooperative drop falling from her. She attempts to complete her message, but she’s crying again.

Tsukimi-san, just Ren to Tachikawa, childhood friend of nineteen years, steps away, palms over her eyes. Miwa squad escorts her out, along with a few other operators, who chase after with tissues pulled out their pockets.

An exhausting scene to even watch. It’s only the first A-rank squad.

“Arashiyama squad, step forward.”

Red uniforms walk to the podium together, Arashiyama to the side for just this once. The team flanks Kitora, their only attacker and ace.

She steps up to the trigger with a heavy stomp of her boot.

“Trigger On,” she orders.

Uncooperative. The trigger doesn’t respond just as Tachikawa-san never did quite listen; she drops it like an immense weight, her shoulders sagging with relief right after. The cube, in turn, only falls back to its plush mattress with a soft scuffing sound, like classroom chalk falling into a cloth bag.

She quickly slips back into position, eager to be tucked back in between Arashiyama and Mitsuru.

“Thank you for everything, Tachikawa-san,” Arashiyama says loudly.

He never did ask Jin how the meeting with the Tachikawas went. Maybe he already knew from how Shinoda looked, and maybe he was busy enough grieving himself.

Shinoda-san, steadfast and simple, attracted his own sort. Tachikawa-san never did quite like the media, all bright lights, prodding questions and fuss. He liked his messy rank room, his team, his teacher, his sword. Arashiyama in turn liked his job, his tidy room, his warm family, team included.

It wasn’t the fame, it was the people you loved, it was the craft, it was the reward of a job well done to your own standards. From their own worlds, Tachikawa and Arashiyama waved and smiled at each other, friends in their own way.

That’s why Arashiyama opened Border’s shared calendar on his phone only to find that Tachikawa squad had picked up the slack on patrol duties – those weeks where Arashiyama squad’s schedules only left an hour for rest. That’s why Tachikawa squad never once had microphones and cameras shoved in their faces or reporters camping outside their homes.

That’s why Arashiyama can’t find any scripts of condolences even with his years of media training. The vocabulary fails – he only recalls the casual

“These snacks are going to expire soon, share them with your team,”

and the weight of a paper bag, and the smile on his own face, the easy nod of thanks.

He bows deeply, and the team follows. Two steps from the door, Satori whispers into Arashiyama’s ear, and the latter nods. The team leaves without their sniper.

Kazama squad stands up without being called.

Utagawa tries. Kikuchihara tries. They hand the cube to each other and step away from it. Kazama does not falter. When the black trigger does not react to him. He steps back, and his team retreats to the back of the room, but does not leave.

What is left is what was left of the former Tachikawa squad.

“Izumi-kun…” Shinoda starts.

“Please let me try,” He says. All heads turn to the blonde boy with bloodshot eyes at the back of the room.

Shinoda nods and lets the tragedy unfold. Izumi walks between Kunichika and Satori, who stayed behind. He’s the tallest in the trio, and in his black coat commands the most attention. But it’s seeing a sapling next to a freshly dead stump in the forest. What remains still can't stand to the height of what is now missing.

Not much was known of black triggers beyond the fact that they were strong and sad things. Still, a swordsman like Tachikawa had no business leaving behind any other weapon. But still,

But still,

Still, Izumi picked up the small black cube.

“Trigger On,” he calls.

Izumi was turned away from the rest of the room, all Jin could see was the quaver of his shoulders through his soot black coat. But Satori’s face was rippling was concern and repressed tears. The room was an ugly, twisting wait.

“Trigger **ON**!”

“Izumi-senpai,” Satori blurts, tears falling freely, rushing forth.

“Izumin, Izumin,” Kunichika cries, pulling the boy into her arms and letting him sob, their captain cradled in Izumi’s two hands.

“It’s my fault! _It’s my fault_!” 

The room shatters into chaos. Management stares stock still, or sighs and looks away. The crowd of A-rankers in the room shuffle in discomfort. Reiji is holding back tears.

Now it is clear why Kazama squad lingered behind. They stride forward to the wreckage, where Shinoda tenses with apprehension. Kazama’s face is still his resting scowl, his disapproval that Tachikawa isn’t keeping his younger teammate in line. He grabs Izumi with a firm, tight hold.

And pulls Izumi into a firm embrace. He tugs the younger boy to his height, shields him from the room. Kikuchihara and Utagawa do the same, flanking their captain until he coaxes the black trigger from Izumi’s vice grip, and returns it to its cushion.

What is left of Tachikawa squad, what Tachikawa gave his life to protect – Kazama squad leads out the room.

Jin remembers when Tachikawa first met Izumi, the approved team application crumpled in his hands, since the man never heard of folders or cared for them. In his none too gentle grasp, a flustered blonde, being dragged over to an amused Jin. _You wouldn’t believe his trion level; he’s going to be the best shooter, we’ll be the strongest team-_

What was his reply? Probably _Good to know you’ll stop bugging me for rank wars now_ – or _you’re wrong and_

_We’re the strongest team, Tachikawa-san._

It’s the former – he’s not that deluded from sleep to even entertain the memory that he might have told Tachikawa-san anything honest. Still, the thought that it was honest, it is a warm thought, even so far in the past.

But that’s all the fondness Jin is allowed before Konami stand and shouts-

“I’m not doing this!”

Rindo opens his mouth, Kinuta mutters something like Tamakoma again with a scowl. Kido levels a look at her which is promptly ignored.

“Tamakoma has our own triggers-”

“Konami,” Reiji hushes,

“Kako squad didn’t come either. We don’t need to be here-”

And they don’t, they don’t even want to be here. But Jin stands and walks to the podium, pushing past an enraged Konami.

“Jin!” She yells,

As Jin lifts up the black trigger, Konami is two steps behind him, near tears in anger.

“What did you even invent scorpion for then?”

She’s not being cruel because she’s angry – she’s only ever this desperate when she’s grieving. Jin wishes he didn’t know that about Konami.

The black trigger weighs as much as a bird, all hollow bones. How strange, no one before him seemed to hint at the strange coating on the trigger. It feels like a coal briquette, and leaves a fine, powdery black on Jin’s fingers. He turns it one way and another, letting his hands be dusted black, but somehow, the soot never falls to the ground, just sticks to Jin.

Jin remembers Tachikawa’s face the first time he showed him Scorpion’s prototype. Jin remembers his smile.

“Trigger On,” Jin says, as the door slams behind Konami.

Nothing.

_Nothing_ **_nothing_** _, thank God. I won’t have another black trigger after all,_ he thinks, before his heart goes blue from a strangling guilt.

_Was I always such a coward?_

The room is doused in a cold, unholy silence, before a loud, painful crack is heard, like bone against rock.

At their smallest units, charcoal and diamonds are identical, the trigger shifted curiously, like stirring in Jin’s grasp, realizing something within itself. It was a brick before, a matte dusty cube, charred black, and now it shifted once, and was glossy, reflective.

“ _Ouch_!”

It’d fractured – that loud crack before. Its uniform surface suddenly prickly with crystal thorns. All across its sides was a magma red wound. First safely solid, then glowing and warm, then suddenly searing hot and molten. Jin holding a scoop of lava in his hands.

He drops it.

“Jin!” Shinoda exclaims, even as Jin recovers and bends quickly to retrieve it. It’s gone dull and cold again, but still broken. The fractures don’t crumble, and their red ebbs and recedes back into a dark black.

His palms aren’t stinging from the heat, nor is he bleeding from its sudden fracture – but his heart is thundering still. _Hostile_ wasn’t the right word, neither was _fearful._ Just a message sent – Not you, anyone but you.

“Are you alright, Jin?” Rindo asks.

Jin makes eye contact, and nods once.

“Trigger on,” he tries again.

Nothing.

“Trigger on,” Jin repeats.

“Shinoda-san,” Jin says, something like desperation in his voice, the same tone as when Jin begged Shinoda had to extract his student from asking for another round in the rank war booths.

“Give him to me,” Shinoda says hurriedly, and Jin presses the black trigger into his open hand.

“Trigger On,” Shinoda pleads.

Nothing.


	3. The Ceremony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're not having second thoughts _now_ , are you?

Traditional and perhaps just the little bit sentimental, they opted for a private Buddhist funeral, at the small temple skirting the city.

Breaking the news to the Tachikawas that they weren’t afforded the grace nor dignity of a decent funeral was easy, since the air was thick with general confusion of what their son had become. It seemed Tachikawa had barely bothered to explain how triggers worked, and never even brought up black triggers. It was like trying to explain that their son was now an iPhone. His parents were too perplexed to be sad.

Jin almost felt sorry for them, but after the fifth flight of stairs he’d had to climb, the intensity of his sympathy was now curling inwards to be directed at himself instead.

“We could have taken the bike, you know, Jin,” Shinoda said from twenty steps ahead, quite literally looking down at Jin and his quavering legs.

“You said it was a short walk,” Jin huffed.

“It is,” Shinoda insisted, “It’s barely three kilometers from the train station.”

“Uphill,” Jin appended.

Shinoda nodded and smiled in that witless way that meant “yes, and?”.

Jin gave up. The uphill trek was one war; trying to convince a man that woke at 4 A.M daily for a jog that a three-kilometer walk could kill a couch potato, that was another fight – he had to pick his battles.

Especially so now, while his body was trying to ration enough oxygen between his brain and his aching legs.

“Go ahead, I’ll catch up,” Jin waved.

Shinoda frowned.

“I’ll be up on time, promise,” Jin said.

He waited till Shinoda’s lively footsteps trailed up ahead, a quick tapping that tapered into the sounds of the forest before he slumped onto the concrete stairs in his full formal wear.

If only this counted as official business, he’d be able to use his trion body then. Tachikawa’s parents refused any payout beyond the insurance they already had. The funeral was to be small and private – distinctly not for the whole organization.

The day was warm, the sleep of summer, exactly thirty days before what would have been Tachikawa-san’s birthday. The station they left was crowded with throngs of students with ice creams and iced coffees, enjoying their reprieve from school. On the way up, they’d seen a whole family of crows out for a jaunty walk, the ground too lovely today to appreciate from far up high. Flowers curved to a perk; grass stretched to the sun.

Everyone having a better time than him.

The world was a painting, a still life. No futures flickered or morphed, the only movement from the dried leaves that trembled among the green grass, like bronze and gold foil. Though the morning dew had long dried from the sun, the air an inch off the ground was still moist and cool. An ant trotted out the grass by his ankle, seemed to notice him, and u-turned right back into the grassforest, away from the giant.

_What made humans so special that they had futures_ , Jin wondered. He couldn’t see the future of an ant, or a tree. He leaned heavy on his thighs, watching the spot the ant entered, wondering if it would return.

Instead, the wind blew, and flopped a soggy, dying flower right onto the concrete, across his shoes.

It only had three white petals, the rest browned and dried.

_If even he won’t, if odd he might._

Even those three white remaining petals were wilted and yellowed, nothing like the cottony white of its siblings in the field. But still, its stem uprighted itself once the wind stopped. Its leaves were small, but green and open.

A brave little soldier. Jin can’t see its future.

On the way up, Jin remembers.

For a long time, all memories that surfaced were painful choking oil that refused to disperse – deaths, wreckage, loud noises of war, pain. Somewhere about the way, they shed off, and mundane things began to float in his memory.

Today, in the calm of the forest, he is remembering when their high school was punished with a mass run across the city in the name of health and bonding as a school (perhaps over shared suffering). The route took them through the pavements, away from busy roads, round about Mount Hasami, then back again.

During their briefing, Jin had foresaw a young teacher skiving to play with their phone. Right before a large bend, he hopped over the barricade, and slipped off the route, zig-zagging up the hill, diving behind tree trunks until runners passed before he kept going, deeper and deeper into the green,

The trees were, then as now, generous with their shade, and the wind, brushing through the trunks of the trees with him, whistling through their leaves in joy. Jin threaded his way in until he came to the sleeping grey staircase, that curled from the sunny peak down to the noisy city.

He takes a curious step up, before deciding against it. Too much trouble, and besides, he’d have to rejoin his classmates at the assembly point soon.

By bus, that was.

“You there! Why aren’t you with your class!”

Someone roared behind him, startling Jin from his peace. He armed himself with a disarming smile, turning quickly to diffuse the situation.

“I just got lost, and-“

“You’re full of shit, Jin,” the voice interrupted, and Jin dropped his smile, frowning down at the interloper.

“Tachikawa-san,” Jin greets, “why bother coming to school if you’re going to skip P.E too?”

  1. _He loves you._



Mum made it easy not to be homesick.

Home was warm, she and dad were healthy. The food was good and the same every day. Miso and egg rolls for breakfast. The fifteen years had gone by the same, New Years to Christmas a straight line from mochi and tangerines to chocolate log cakes.

The human brain – what little he learnt about it between naps in Biology –

The human brain ignores; it ignores blinking and breathing and the repetitive, mundane stimuli of your family’s love. All this ignoring so that you can focus on what is threatening: The ilgar’s massive, twitching back, and when it’d deem it right to explode. The twitching, searching eyes of marmods. You don’t think of home when you’re out breathing air from another dimension’s sky leaking trion out into their ozone.

You don’t think of home until Jin looks at you through the grass and the Outside is home and he asks if you ever get homesick. Tachikawa wants to ask if you get Bus-Stopsick, or Train Station-sick, or Toilet cubicle-sick.

But it’s lonely in Jin’s eyes, empty without knowledge of family in the most boring sense of the word.

So you tell him things you’re only just realizing. How dad taught you kendo until the invasion shattered his ankle and he threw you into Shinoda’s care to grow taller somewhere further. That mum seemed to cook breakfast boring but lunch colourful so you’d never associate home with anything interesting.

That you know, your back to Earth and eyes on the stars, that the light was still on at home.

You tell him your parents let you go out and fill in Valentine’s day between January first and December thirty-first. And they let you flunk math with a scolding and a cake in the fridge for becoming the top attacker in Border.

You let him nod and smile, happy with a good answer. You realize too late the magic is in not letting the kids know you wait up and worry and miss them, and

Love them.

“I wonder if we’ll be good parents too,” You ask, while trying to remember your mother’s face the last time you saw her. You don’t realize your big fucking mistake until it’s too late.

“We?” Jin asks, and you feel yourself burst red from the squeeze of your heart to the roots of your hair.

Jin is laughing, smiling, and you need to open your big mouth now to fix what you just revealed and messed up.

“It’s time to go back and meet the others,” You say, sudden deliberate interest in your phone’s clock. Jin stares like you’re the worst actor in the world, oh _god_.

He probably knows.

He should have just used his trion body.

Izumi had personally asked to come, with Kunichika and Yuiga. It was a usual sight for them to dress in black, but never once with their faces that pale. The Tachikawas knew him, and Mitsuha was holding his hands, warming them in hers. Tsukasa had a steady hand on his shoulder. For the first since that night, Izumi seemed calm.

Jin wonders if this is his first real funeral. Not those where there’s a dead person you never quite knew and not those funerals you had in bed when you watched the news too long and knew that a thousand lives were to be grieved in the world that night.

A _funeral_.

Then with Izumi came Satori, of course, standing aside with what should be Tachikawa’s aunt, if the woman’s curly hair and prominent height were any clue. A celebrity - His stance is polite, his smile attentive but his eyes furtive, always looking at his boyfriend from the corner of his eye, his brows low with worry.

“Jin?”

Konami strides up to him, hair in twin braids. Her navy blue dress was in the wash and she was left with the one too-short black dress she owned, worn with black tights for decency, and borrowed black flats from school.

“Did you walk all the way here? Why didn’t you just let Reiji drive?”

He really should have just used his trion body.

And with her, Kazama and Murakami, both close comrades, then what must be all the kogetsu users that knew him – Kumagai and with her, Nasu in her wheelchair. Nasu must have coaxed the elusive Kako along, who of course dragged her unwilling ex-teammate Ninomiya, who was faithfully accompanied by a chipper Inukai and a shy Tsuji.

A weird daisy chain of Border agents, each in their circles and Jin alone with the one other Tamakoma member, too far away from where the coffin should have been.

The temple bell rang like it was broken, with a discordant high clang! that rounded out to a deep ugly tremor. At the door of the main hall, the Head Monk stood with Shinoda standing with

A small black box.

that didn’t want Jin to hold it.

  1. _He loves you not._



Their child is in his lap, half asleep, mumbling for a bed time story. He wanted to know how papa fell in love with tou-san.

It was the shortest story there was. Jin met Tachikawa when he was 17.

The End.

Sometimes the futures he saw were so far away – but the likeliest to materialize; their child is sleeping and Jin is running his fingers through feathery curls, rocking him in a daze. So small, but he’s outgrown his onesie _again_ , he’s just had fish porridge for dinner, his stuffed dinosaur is dripping dry in the bathroom.

like a dream you felt more than remembered. When you wake you feel locked out your own house, well,

It felt so real.

Jin remembers Tachikawa’s own thick locks. The futures in his hair - countless strands of beginnings and continues and easy ends that curled into another wave of beginnings. In his hair their futures, in his arms, on his lips, always promises and warmth. In his eyes, always love.

He remembers, something always hurting under the oily trauma of war – he remembers how it felt to be in love and to want. To want to be in love.

But the winter was long – first his mother, then Mogami, then the promise of thousands on thousands more, the announcement of the competition for Fuujin, he can’t even remember the weight of Fuujin, or how it felt in his hands-

he couldn’t find Tachikawa in the hallways after winning the competition and learns from others that he’s already in the dimension over. He’s two weeks late to knowing when he was usually the first.

The soot from Tachikawa’s cubic corpse shed on him like molt to cleanse his touch; crystals to cut and anger to scald. It didn’t recognize him it rejected him like the rest of them like he was the same as the others like he was justanotherperson

When Tachikawa returned home, Jin looked at him and looked away. Their child was hidden from his future sight, the longest game of peek-a-boo. He is gurgling behind his shielded eyes. But the game would go on as long as he kept his eyes shut, and somewhere,

Somewhere, Jin believed for years, somewhere their child is sleeping, and Jin is stroking his powder soft hair, looking in his husband’s open eyes.

There is nothing but love.

The ceremony ends with another bell.

Jin walks proudly past the black, broken cube, and while the others are in a circle he runs downhill. He cannot find the three-petal flower any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brought me to the pedestal, left me there.


	4. HoneyMoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick trip to No Man's Land, and back?

Jin finds himself in the city center by evening, the sun working overtime in summer, the people don’t go home. The streets are full.

He pays the people no mind when they stare at him limping from a bad landing from his run, in a second their futures overtake them anyway, and he doesn’t have to see their faces aghast or concerned at his disheveled appearance. His heart is relentless – pounding so quickly the world staggered slowly around him in comparison.

Where does he go now?

The peace of the forest is far gone – Every person in the crowd is a deck of cards, shuffling between present and future. A hand flipping between this page and the next, each person is a nauseating spinning disc. He stumbles to lean on the pedestrian light, closing his eyes from the nausea.

Some sights press like stones in his skull:

a woman with a sideways glance pointed at him, he sees her boarding her train five minutes later.

The balloon a child is holding floats off in an hour.

The diner the lady is entering will be overpriced and tasteless.

A couple is walking down the street. Jin watches as their future has them smiling through dinner. They will go home. Jin sees them fall asleep with each other.

He wants to go home.

Not Tamakoma where he only has the river slopping underneath as company. Not Border where he has to see more grieving friends. Not his mother’s grave, nor Mogami’s.

Jin walks to the Forbidden zone, where he can finally use his trigger, and his ankle will stop hurting.

Upon first entry the buildings still stand, just surface scratches from asteroids or foot trion soldiers. But then all there is wreckage. Jin stops a kilometer from the base, by the wreckage of a house with its front face peeled away like a dollhouse. The roof too, has sustained damage, and there is a grand piano on the top floor, growing flowers. From that dollhouse, Jin takes a left turn, and then a right.

There,

A splatter of black powder in the street. It’s on the ground. Its’s on the few standing walls. He can’t tell where the dried blood ended and where the black trigger scattered. He can’t tell where Tachikawa Kei started and where he left.

_He (might) love you_

“Jin,”

“Tachikawa-san,”

“Where are you headed?”

“East Zone,”

“…”

“Don’t sulk, there are strong ones in the South too,”

“Are there any black triggers?”

You sigh.

“No, the only black trigger today will be with me,”

Tachikawa stares.

“I thought you traded it for your junior’s, the short one,”

“I get to loan it from time to time.”

You’re bitter.

“If you hate looking at it, then stop staring at it,”

Tachikawa blinks.

“Not really? You just owe me a fight with it,”

You’re curious.

“Wondering how much stronger you’d be with a black trigger?”

He makes a face like he’s looking at those optical illusion drawings.

“Not really. Kogetsu is fine.”

You’re vindictive.

“Could have fooled me. You sulked the entire two months after I got Fuujin.”

Tachikawa has a question mark dangling over his head, with the way he’s looking at you.

“I thought you just wanted space,”

You’re confused.

“You weren’t mad that I…”

Both your phones beep. It’s time to get in formation. You’re already ready to tuck this conversation in your head and forget it indefinitely.

You’re embarrassed.

“Jin,” he calls, his phone still beeping in his hand.

“you thought I was angry?”

“I’m needed at the East zone.”

You turn to walk, fine. So he says he wasn’t angry. It won’t erase how he acted back then. But he catches you on your arm, not hard enough to jerk you backwards. You don’t look up to face him.

“I wasn’t angry.”

“Alright.”

“Mogami-san was your teacher-“

“We should-”

“If it happened to Shinoda-san,” Tachikawa continues, something desperate in his voice, “I’d do the same.”

You look at where he’s holding you.

“I thought you just needed space.”

You nod.

“Let’s get dinner after this?”

You nod.

You don’t look at him.

You didn’t look at him.

Youdidn’tlookathim

YOU

DIDN’T

LOOK

AT

HIM.

Shinoda calls you on your phone. Otherwise you would have spent the night standing in the middle of the Forbidden Zone.

xo

“Right in here,” Kinuta ushered in his gruff tone. Only Jin and Shinoda knew that was gentle by his standards; the Tachikawas kept their formal, stiff gratitude, thanking him politely until he left them into the room.

Kinuta, head of R&D in Border, didn’t like talking much about himself, but Jin knows enough anyway. He graduated from one of Japan’s top university, with a masters in BioEngineering and a prominent bald spot from the stress. He loved his family, yes, the one he divorced in a fit of concern.

Most privately, Jin knew after a night of ill-advised drinking, while helping Kido cart his colleagues home, Kinuta had a deep-running passion for interior design. Beyond the tabletops with scattered paperwork, every piece of furniture neatly clicked somehow, like molecules fused to create a sleek atelier of caramel-coloured wood panels and burnished steel.

He liked swooping Danish designs, no sharp edges, each texture was either warm, strong, or soft, nothing like the wishy-washy insincerity of plastic. His palette was equally surprising – yellows, browns, light robin’s egg over navy, natural olive greens, and a distinct lack of punishing red.

It was a friendly home, daresay even welcoming. Who knew?

That’s what Jin notes first about the small room they were led into – that Kinuta had likely furnished it personally.

The lighting was nothing like the blinding wattage of the rest of the laboratories, the temperature not as chilly; there was no specimen to preserve here.

The table is a humble woodcrafted platform, chest high, with four curious little knobs like mushrooms at each corner. The plush from the other day had been replaced with another cushion, a firm pillow in black, of a mossy fabric. It even had two pairs of parallel red lines, just like Tachikawa’s squad uniform did.

It’s a bed.

Jin surveyed the room: security systems were painted in unobtrusive camouflage, all wires and sensors hidden within the platform itself, with only a tail of a thick cable any indication that it was, in fact, still a laboratory. The room carried the fragrance of a hotel, something sweet and gentle.

“We can just touch him?” Mitsuha inquired, approaching the black cube nestled in the center of the room.

Shinoda nods. His demeanor is nothing like the authoritarian around Mitsuha. His hands are laced in attention, and he stands aside as he watches his senpai and his senpai-in-law quietly. Jin is seeing new perspectives to everyone he thought he’d already known and catalogued.

Jin, too, finds himself unwilling to talk, watching as they reach for their sleeping child.

“Kei?” Mitsuha asks, holding the cube between herself and her husband.

“I think you’re supposed to say ‘Trigger On’” Tsukasa mutters, leaning against the bedframe, which groaned uncomfortably.

“I don’t- are we? Shinoda-kun?” Mitsuha asks, turning to Shinoda in confusion.

Shinoda smiles, amused.

“No harm in trying,” He replies.

“I’ll do it,” Tsukasa volunteers. “If it works and I get a trigon body or whatever-”

“Trion,” Shinoda coughs.

“I’m gonna get back to kendo and wipe the floor with Masafumi again, damn this old knee,”

“Dear,” Mitsuha warns.

“Of course, you can go first,” Tsukasa says, “he always listened to you,”

Mitsuha sighs at her husband, then studies the cube sternly.

“It’d be good if he listened for once,” she starts, exasperated, “Kei, we just had to get your things from your dorm, and,”

“Are you really nagging the boy now?” Tsukasa interjects.

“-your laundry unseparated, is that why you always wear black? And your kitchen only had cup noodles and protein powder, it’s amazing you didn’t leave us earlier, good god. And your grades!”

“now you’ve done it,” Tsukasa whispers to his son, who seemed as attentive as he was while alive.

“Are you with grandpa and grandma? Will you tell them your cousin just had a daughter, and that Natsuki-san from their pilates class-“

“Trigger On!” Tsukasa calls, poking the cube curiously.

“Tsukasa-san!”

“You can send him on afterlife errand runs but I can’t-“

“You talk to him! Tell him to stop sulking and start working with his friends!” Mitsuha exclaimed, shoving their son into her husband’s hands.

Tsukasa paused, staring at the cube. Then his wife.

“I’m not good with words,” he finished lamely.

“Oh, for- Trigger, Trigger on!” she said, pressing her fingers on the soft cube.

Nothing.

“eugh, he’s dusty,” Tsukasa mutters, looking at his fingertips.

“Making a mess even now,” Mitsuha comments, shaking her head in disapproval and reaching in her purse for a tissue.

Jin and Shinoda glance at each other, before Shinoda makes the decision for them both that it’s better left confidential.

“You can both come by anytime,” he says, as they tuck their son into bed.

“Yes,” Mitsuha says, smiling gently. Her hand doesn’t stop rummaging in her purse, before she pulls out a small, folded paper, onionskin and translucent.

A talisman. She tucks it under the pillow, and bends down, kissing her son once.

“Let’s go,” Tsukasa says, turning his fond gaze away, “let’s go get some drinks, Masafumi,”

“Let’s,” Mitsuha replies, “Jin-kun, will you be joining us?”

Tsukasa holds his wife’s hand in his, and just about pushes Shinoda forward.

“He’s underage, dear. We’ll have him over for dinner some other time.”

“Jin, aren’t you twenty already?” Shinoda calls from the doorway.

Tsukasa looks at him over his shoulder.

The door closes Jin in.

xo

Would having that last dinner have solved anything?

In the silence you wonder why it took his death for you to think about him, and a small part of you wonders if you’re only entertaining the thought of love out of guilt.

You walk near.

“Tachikawa-san,” you whisper.

“I don’t know.” You admit.

“I knew what it was back then, but then I didn’t, I still don’t know. You asked if….”

“You asked if we’d be good parents.”

“I don’t think I would be.” You confess. The last time you carried a baby you had less than a minute to evacuate it before it died of smoke inhalation.

“But I guess I could learn, and I wanted to,” you’re speaking softer, softer, like someone’s listening, “just like you, so...”

“While I figure it out, could you wait a little longer?”

The guilt hurts. The fact that you know his answer hurts more. You wonder when you turned out like this, someone who’d put a dead man on a waiting list. Was it sometimes between

He loves you

And

He loves you not

Or perhaps it was when

He loves you became He _loved_ you

But you lay your head on his bed by him, stare at him with eyes of nothing but love, even if you don’t know what love you had to give. You touch his face with one hand.

He’s warm in your hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you keep wasting daisies like that, I won't have enough to make our wedding rings, you know.

**Author's Note:**

> decathect - verb
> 
> to withdraw one's feelings of attachment from (a person, idea, or object), an act of anticipatory grief.


End file.
